Tobacco Documents Online

INFOTAB WORKSHOP GROUP DISCUSSIONS - TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 20 - Tony St. Aubyn Group 2 - "Forming Tobacco Alliance and defending the Rights of Smokers" Our group began by discussing the possible validity for organizations such as the Tobacco Allliance or FO.RES^-in other countries and, to put not too fine a point on it, a number of countries were sceptical about it, which I think is only to be expected. Points such as the political environment in certain countries where they have a different view on the freedom of marketing would perhaps curtail any activities in these directions. Sociological attitudes to smoking, among smokers, particularly in some Scandinavian countries, is another problem that needs to be got over. There will be difficulties and pitfalls undoubtedly but we felt that one shouldn't be obsessed by them and somebody pointed out the remark made by Stephen Eyres this morning that with FOREST they have taken a great "leap in the dark." Think positive could perhaps be the message there rather than thinking too many negatives. The whole range of information that needs to be put over to the population has got to be targeted. This we have seen being done in Argentina through information seminars. Other countries and companies within countries used this approach with selected, limited, audiences. .Now the sort of subject areas we identified as being possible for a Tobacco Alliance/FOREST type organization to tackle - freedom of the individual, courtesy and tolerance between smokers and non-smokers, taxation, the freedom to continue advertising, and perhaps even, in an oblique fashion, the scientific/medical arguments. So in summary, we identified a need to test existing attitudes in the country, to pick the themes that you want to use and then to pick the target audiences and the vehicles for those particular themes with the accent on vehicles in the plural because there are almost certainly more than 2, perhaps 3 or 4 vehicles, that you will need to approach anyone of the whole rash of problems the industry faces. Horses for courses, but always have a good stable full of horses available.